Kate and Justin Cox, lifelong Texans, faced a difficult situation when they discovered their unborn baby had trisomy 18, a severe genetic condition.
Wanting to terminate the pregnancy due to the prognosis and risks to Kate’s health, they encountered Texas’ strict abortion laws.
Despite legal battles, they eventually had the abortion in New Mexico.
Kate Cox left Texas to get an abortion to end her non-viable pregnancy just hours before the state’s Supreme Court ruled against her.
In her first interview since, Cox told @CBSSunday that she fought hard to have the procedure in her home state. Watch her interview this Sunday. pic.twitter.com/j5Pr5Y9Bfr
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) January 12, 2024
“We asked, ‘How long we could have with our baby – best-case scenario?’ And she said she thought maybe a week. … If she survived the pregnancy and the birth, that it might be a week. And what that would mean as far as – I didn’t want to watch her suffer. That would be very hard. She would have had to be placed directly on to hospice. There’s no treatment that can be done,” Kate said.
“Did you think your health, your life, would be threatened if you went through with the birth?” she was asked.
“Yes,” Kate replied.
“We know a lot of the trisomy 18 babies don’t survive birth, so I could lose her at any point in the pregnancy. There’s risk of infection, risk of uterine rupture. And we want more children as well, so what does that mean for future pregnancies?”
“I wanted to be here, close to home. I mean, it’s the hardest thing I’ve been through. I wanted to come home, cry on my own pillow, hold my babies, be near my doctors. So, I was really hopeful. That’s really what I thought about most going into this,” Kate said.
“Some of the people on this other side of the issue say, ‘Why not just have the baby naturally, and whatever happens, happens’?” she was pressed.
“I want more babies,” Kate siad. “I talked with our doctors. And I didn’t want her to suffer. I felt it was best for her, and I felt it was best for our family as well. We want to be able to have more babies. We want to give siblings to our kids.”
“Her name’s Chloe,” Kate said.
“Why did you feel it was important to give her a name?” she was asked.
“I gave her a name because she’ll always be my baby,” Kate said. “Her middle name is my grandfather’s name, so that she knew who to look for in heaven.”
The Texas Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling, emphasizing the absence of a meaningful exception in the state’s abortion law.
“It was crushing,” said Kate of the ruling. “I was shocked that the state of Texas wanted me to continue a pregnancy where I would have to wait until a baby dies in my belly, or dies at birth, or lives for days, and put my own health at risk, and a future pregnancy at risk.”
Despite the challenges, Kate’s story shed light on the impact of abortion bans on families and healthcare.
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